Like Gardening Under Water

The water is in the air, in the ground, and bursting through plant life.  It's a flood of LIFE!  I leave for nine days and come back to a deluge of life. Bumblebees and butterflies; raspberries up to my nose. July is usually hot and dry here on the plains.  This year we get hot and under water.

A disappeared onion bed.  Chives in the lower left corner, a young hollyhock in the right, and the rest is, well, weeds.

Anna and the hollyhock, which is  fairly bloomed out.  Echinacea in front.

Here are the sweet potatoes two weeks ago, when I was pulling onions.

The sweet potatoes this morning.

At the top of this row you can see two rows of beans I planted 9 days ago.

 In the forecast?  98 degrees tomorrow.

Under It

The water is in the air, in the ground, and bursting through plant life.  It's a flood of LIFE!  I leave for nine days and come back to a deluge of life. Bumblebees and butterflies; raspberries up to my nose. July is usually hot and dry here on the plains.  This year we get hot and under water.

Now Hot

The pepper beds, with weeds.

The pepper beds, without weeds.

 

 

One hundred plus degrees forecast today!

Another Soggy Morning

No recognizable rows.

Recognizable rows.

An inch of rain, a little hail, tornado sirens, but no bad news.  Everything just keeps growing.

Miss Quote

She's not really a tame cat any more.  She hunts out in the pole barn.  And on the pole barn.  She's very thin but pretty happy.  I think.  Photos by Owen.

Onions

Here they are, tops flopped over.  Initially I thought it was the result of dogs running through the garden, but closer examination showed that they were declaring themselves ready to be pulled.

Here is about half the crop, I think.  The rest are still in the ground -- they might grow another week, I guess. The second photo shows them "drying" on the mulch of the sweet potato row.  Drying in quotes because we had another inch of rain last night! I'll have to move them into the basement soon.  The trampoline was a great onion-dryer, but Corbie the cow now owns it, and she would eat them, I'm sure.  Sheep did last year!

Progress!

There they are -- the hatched-by-incubator babies.  Flight lessons have been successful, and they are now OUTSIDE, in a newly-built pen.  Hooray!  They were flying up to roost on the sides of their box, and of course visiting the floor on occasion.

Apres Le Deluge

There are puddles on the cardboard and everything is dripping wet.

Can you see the droplets of water?

Poor holey cabbages -- the cabbage worms have arrived.

Last night there was a lot of thunderstorm excitement over all of Nebraska and much of Kansas.  We got a bit over an inch; it all came down in about half an hour.  And now the temperatures are lovely and cool.  But it's too muddy to actually pull the weeds!

Some Blooms

Well, the yellow are calendula, there are some white cilantro blossoms, and the borage is blue, but nearly invisible.  Oh, and yellow dill above, and weedy garlic further up.

The Hollyhock

It all started with a volunteer hollyhock about 5 years ago that appeared in the chicken coop.  It was a dark maroon. After it was done, another volunteer appeared in the garden;  it was pale pink. Then another one appeared last year in a spot that seemed workable, so I left it. What you see above is how it looked a month ago.

Now we know what color IT is. It is a cream color that I find I like better than the pale pink.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another time there'll be a person next to it for scale.  This is its size this morning.

I should note that I did buy some seeds after the volunteers arrived, since I was inspired.  None of those plants have survived.